This is a post from Dave Nichols of Iowa that I found very interesting....it is old but hopefully still relevant.
From Dave Nichols in IA (posted on Advantage):
Data is automatically submitted when a sire's daughter reports her first calf. She is compared to the other sires daughters contemporary group and the Epd is reported as a deviation as are all Epds that are based on phenotypic data.
The first HP sire summery we had the highest EPD (Nichols Extra H6) we also had the worst bull (Nichols Black Ink). I was sure that Extra H6 was accurate, but I was sure that Black Ink's Epd was incorrect, because his beautiful females fit all the parameters of what are considered ideal Angus cows and all had visual indicaters of fecundity. I said to our foreman, Bill Antisel, that Black Ink surely was not that bad. He retorted, "are you kidding, we don't have any of the bitches left". I challenged him to a bet for the best steak in Iowa that we had daughters in our herd because they would be 4 -8 years old in the prime of their lives. We had my partner, Lil, print out a sheet on Extra H6 and Black Ink's daughters in our inventory. I nearly dropped my teeth when I say that we only had 2 daughters of Black Ink and told Bill that I was not going to enjoy the CAP New York Strip much, but planned to collect. With a broad and cocky smile, "he said, those two daughters are in the open pen and are going to become hamburger. Black Inks daughter left because they were open. We breed around 300 heifers a year, and I note the sires daughters that are open the first year as virgins and their second calves. But after that they become part of our cow herd and we cull or keep them based on their calves.
By the way, in this time period that we were culling all these Black Ink daughters we only had two Extra H6 daughters that were open or culled for anything.
This is how I sort A.I. bulls regarding female sires. Sort Sire Summary for those sires whose daughters are in the top 10-15% for all the following traits. Heifer Pregnancy: Maternal Calving Ease; $Weaning. In other words, are they fertile, can they have a big calf easily, and how many pounds will she wean. Frankly, that's what beef cows are supposed to do. End of story!
Fair warning.. you'll be heading to your semen tanks and pitching a bunch of semen that were rumored to sire great females.